This image provided by the Profiles in History auction house shows the cover of an auction catalog, featuring several pages of what has become known as “The Joan Anderson Letter,” some 16,000 Benzedrine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words written by Neal Cassady to his friend Jack Kerouac in 1950.LOS ANGELES – When a letter credited with inspiring Jack Kerouac to create a new literary genre suddenly surfaced, no one was happier than an 86-year-old poet and playwright from New Jersey.
For more than 50 years, Gerd Stern had been wrongly accused of tossing what Kerouac called “the greatest piece of writing I ever saw” over the side of a houseboat.
“Yes, I’m the guy who dropped the letter off the boat, but of course I didn’t,” Stern, laughing heartily, said after The Associated Press reported Sunday that the 16,000-word screed to Kerouac from his friend and literary muse Neal Cassady was found intact last week in a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“At least 12 literary publications through the years have accused me,” Stern said. “People have written to me and damned me for this. After 50 years, it’s a blessing to be vindicated.”
Cassady, who wrote the letter over three amphetamine-fueled days in 1950, sent it to Kerouac just before Christmas.